A Private Race
by Zabbie Q
Summary: [Gift for a friend] It's hard for a diesel and an electric to be friends when their families hate each other.


A gift for my friend, StuteriRose. (Check out her StEx fanart on DA!) Smear and Tock/Tussock belong to her.

* * *

From my hill above the fuel dump, I can see the two of them racing. It's not much of a track, really. It's surrounded by hills and has tunnels on both ends, and when the summer sun is up high enough, it makes the smell of coke far too powerful. But these two like it. Out in the main yard, those young engines pretend they don't know each other, but here on my little-used track that gots weeds between the ties, their friendship can bloom as they go from A to B and back.

The locoboy is a diesel named Smear. He wears yellow paint and the shield of the Union Pacific on the back of his vest. Smear is handsome, I guess. Maybe the locogirl thinks so too; I never asked her. But the thing everybody knows about Smear is his family connections, what with him being the nephew of Greaseball, the ex-champion racer. Out in the yard, Smear gets flocked by girls wanting to meet his celebrity uncle and by men who jeer at him for being related to a locomotive what lost to a steamer. In the yard, he has to uphold his family's honor by helping Greaseball train for the next race, so of course he can't appear to know the locogirl beside him now, even though she makes him smile. (He don't think I notice, but I do.)

The locogirl is a tall, funny-looking electric with a funny-sounding name like Tock of a Clock. Don't ask me where she got it. She certainly had it before she came to this yard. Electra might have given her some fancy Greek name like himself if it had been his idea to build her. All I know of her story is that some factory tried to craft a fancy electric train before it ran out of money. The orphaned trainlings were sent out into the world as if somebody blew upon a dandelion, and Electra the prototype engine took this one in. (Maybe it was a publicity stunt, and he was playing Daddy Warbucks to her Little Orphan Annie. I couldn't tell you.)

Tock doesn't look like her foster family at any rate. She has black paint on almost every part of her body although her face is blue and white. I can't see her face now on account of the needle-nose racing helmet she wears, but I can see she has tied her white mane back into a ponytail which flies behind her as she runs beside Smear. I heard tell that Electra's freezer lady has made him enough wigs for each day of the year, but I ain't never seen Tock keep a new wig looking neat for more than an hour. She's the opposite of Smear in that regard; Smear keeps himself and his brown hair neat, like his uncle and his coach mama, but Tock seems to like him looking that way. (She don't think I notice, but I do.) Out in the yard, Tock works like a switch engine even though she's a loco; I think she does it to make her daddy and his freezer mad. In the yard, she ignores Smear when he comes to visit his uncle and stays with the other switchers.

The fuel dump might not be the best place for racing, but it's quiet, and there's electric wires here for Tock. Control has a few relic electric switch engines he keeps employed, and they need the wires to pull fuel waste to the dump. So, Tock and Smear race from one edge of the electric lines to the next, and even though the track is small, they make do and accommodate the other.

I know that their families aren't too keen on each other. Haven't been for a while now. In Electra's first race here, he and Greaseball had been rivals in the final. Greaseball had uncoupled his pretty partner like she was dead weight and went after the caboose Electra had been racing with, and the two engines crashed. Greaseball lost his winning streak, and Electra lost his chance to prove his prototype was a good model, and their defeat meant Rusty the steamer won. That made many engines, both diesel and electric, convert to steam, and now Greaseball and Electra are pariahs to all those who are against the conversions.

So, Smear and Tock come here to race. Sometimes Smear brings me supplies and repairs the roof of my shed for my silence. Sometimes Tock brings me some polish from her daddy's collection and lets me borrow the tools she's smuggled away from the family's repair truck for a spell. I guess they figure their time together is worth paying for.

As I watch now on my hill, sipping from the bottle of homebrewed sun tea Smear has brought, I can see that Tock pulls ahead in their final lap, and she touches the mouth of the tunnel first. She tears off her helmet, breaking the connection to the electric wires, and she punches the air. Smear slows and takes off his helmet too. The two laugh and slap the other's arm.

Then I see something that hasn't happened before. In the shade of the hill, Smear suddenly leans forward, and he plants a kiss upon the locogirl's lips. I almost drop my tea. Tock draws back, looking bewildered. Smear looks just as surprised at himself. They stare at each other for a long moment, not saying anything. Then Smear laughs, embarrassed, and he puts his helmet back on. He starts off, and Tock does the same. The two race anew as if nothing has happened.

But I've been seeing this coming for a while now. It's only a matter of time.

Someday they'll be standing in front of their families, refusing to back down from the bond between them. Smear will have to stand up to Greaseball while Tock will have to challenge Electra and risk being disinherited from his wealthy will. Maybe they might need to elope - if it came to that - but I laugh at myself for thinking that far ahead for these children. I go back to my tea and watch the two enjoy the summer sun and the quiet track.

For now they can be friends.

For now they can just race.


End file.
